It's very rare to find music made with real integrity or sense of purpose these days. Acts like Mariah Carey and Ricky Martin embody the antithesis of integrity: their music is an incidental by-product of their corporate marketing strategies—body training is more important to their success than their music. And just like the scandal of the month (Monica, Elian . . . anybody remember Tonya Harding? O.J.?), the most aesthetically bankrupt music is pushed in our faces continuously. Even independent acts often lack integrity or sense of purpose beyond angling for major label recognition or wallowing in self-indulgence. Real music, at least in my opinion, is not made primarily to make money or to pander to a perceived audience, but rather to express something the artist needs to and must express—something otherwise inexpressible that an artist wants to share with the world. Regardless of whether one really "likes" this music or not, Balkana provides a rare example of music with integrity and purpose.

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O-Type "Strict"

Strict signals the end of the silent years from MX-80/O-Type members Bruce Anderson (guitar) and Dale Sophiea (sampler) with help from usual cohorts Dave Mahoney (drums), Jim Hrabetin (guitar) and Marc Weinstein (drums). After 25 years of making music together the next phase has been entered: They call this New Edge, and Strict is the first of five recordings in the New Edge series. Tearing the seams of music tradition and history, Sophiea splices the tattered ends against Anderson's warped tone and anti-melodic flair.

"Appropriated contemporary classical music samples from Morton Feldman, Claudio Monteverdi, Hugo Distler, Jeanne Desslieux, and Frances Poulenc acts as beds and transitions in the narrative flow of this modern oratorio for rock instrumentation. This is out on the edge of both what is expected and what is allowed. Anderson's darkly meditative and thoughtfully screaming guitar has never sounded more at home. These veterans of MX-80 have evolved into something nobody's found a name for yet." -- Henry Kaiser

The two key musicians on this album have been working with each other for over 30 years, starting with the experimental rock band MX-80. I will break the official indie-music critic's code and admit that I have never heard this apparently legendary band -- but judging by this album, I have definitely been missing something. Though more conceptual and ambient, Medication is something of an avant-garde sister to Spiritualized's Ladies and Gentlemen, We Are Floating In Space. That album was packaged like medication; this one not only features the titular references to chemical euphoria, but the track names are a list of "side effects you may experience". Clearly, these guys don't have J. Spaceman money to throw around on gospel choirs, but they accomplish their objectives quite admirably given vastly fewer resources. The album is through-and-through guitar experiments, with almost no feedback and a great deal of multitracking and chiming harmonics. The sound is continuous throughout, but is more clearly separated into individual ideas than is the norm with this kind of record. The "side effect" titles are not simply for effect; more often than not, they are quite descriptive of the corresponding sounds. "Ringing In Your Ears" consists of feedback carried over from "Euphoria", accompanied by soft chimes. "Metallic Taste" increases the tempo and adds high, picked guitar notes that somehow recall plaque scraping (in a pleasant way). "Sensitivity to Light" makes use of some weird backward-sounding effects that recall the freak-out segment of Midnight Cowboy. Granted, abstracted cork soundscapes should probably not be judged on their listenability, but there is something to be said for the fact that I find myself listening to this album much more often than other, similarly ambitious endeavors. I suppose here, as everywhere, experience really does count. -- bm

O-Type was the moniker Anderson and MX-80's extraordinary bassist Dale Sophiea used to create theme music for a Ralph film (the theme to which crops up on Das Love Boat) and sporadically revived to churn out doom-laden, Germanic power-rock that's not all that far removed from an axe-wielding Suicide — especially Anderson's impassioned vocals. Darling is the pick of that litter. The Gizzards (identified as "the weak, separated Siamese twins of three MX-80 members" — geddit?) offer a few more laffs, though not nearly as many as Sgt. Peppersteak's title would suggest. Over the course of these releases, the mood has become decidedly more bleak (and MX-80-ish), peaking with Peppersteak's martial, creepy "Straight Line" and "Trailer Park."

Members of MX-80 also back Stim's singing wife, Angel Corpus Christi, on her releases, discs that meld Patti Smith-poesy with fringey no wave. If ever a band realized the potential of pre-punk "underground" noise rock, MX-80 is it.
[Robert Payes/David Sprague]